


Five Things That Happened on the Road

by glorious_spoon



Category: The Witcher (TV)
Genre: 5 Things, Apologies, Family Bonding, Gen, Making Up, Multi, Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:22:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22618570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Geralt and Ciri travel through the war-torn countryside and meet a few old friends of Geralt's along the way. Introductions are made, reconciliations are had, and four people who've been battered by fate discover that there's more than one way to find a family.
Relationships: Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon & Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Comments: 48
Kudos: 208





	1. Nightmare

The third night on the road, Ciri wakes from a dream of fire and blood with a scream clenched behind her teeth. She wakes, she realizes a moment later, because someone is talking nearby, a low, rumbling voice that’s still only half-familiar.

“...first time I was in Cintra, this would be some fifty years past now, there was a new style of billiards that had become popular in the taverns there…” Geralt trails off as she pushes herself upright, scrubbing the remains of the dream from her eyes. The forest is dark at their backs, the fire banked to a pile of hot-glowing coals that casts the witcher’s white hair in shades of yellow and orange. His horse is only visible as a tall shifting shadow tied up at the edge of camp. On the other side, the black river slips by. “My apologies, Princess. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

She shakes her head and accepts the water skin that he passes over. The water inside is stale and faintly acidic, but it helps to remind her body that it exists in the world and not just in the hellscape of nightmares. Geralt prods the fire with a long stick, turning up a shower of sparks, not watching her. She’s glad of that. It gives her time to compose her face ( _back straight, chin up, you’re the Lion Cub of Cintra, child, don’t let them see they’ve rattled you_ , whispers her grandmother’s voice in the back of her head), to scrape the panic and unshed tears away.

“Who were you talking to?” Ciri asks eventually. Her voice comes out rough and raw, like she was screaming after all.

“Roach,” he says, with a nod toward the placid mare. “My horse.”

“You talk to your horse?”

“It passes the time.”

It surprises a laugh out of her. That comes out raw as well, but she feels better for it all the same. “You’re very strange.”

“So I’ve been told.”

She takes a breath, lets it out, then sips from the skin again, holding the water in her mouth. Tasting the metal in it, the weight of it on her tongue. She doesn’t know how to reckon time without the moon in the sky, but she knows it has to be late, and she knows enough of witchers and their supernatural senses to know that she must have woken him. She eyes him where he’s sitting with his arms draped over his knees, watching the fire with a thoughtful air, and says, “You weren’t really talking to your horse, were you?”

He lets out a breath that might be a laugh or might not be. “You should sleep, if you can.”

Ciri nods and hands back the skin, burrowing into her bedroll and wriggling until her body is fitted comfortably into the smooth hollow beneath her. She pulls it over her head to block out the light of the fire and breathes out into that warm comfortable space. It’s chilly this time of year, even with a fire going.

“Geralt?” she says eventually, without opening her eyes.

“Hm?”

“Thank you.”

“Hmm,” he says again. And then, “Get some rest. We have a long journey ahead of us.”

“Alright,” she murmurs. She doesn’t ask where it is they’re going. It doesn’t matter, as long as it involves _away from here._


	2. The Bard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jaskier makes an appearance!

They make camp with a group of refugees about a week later. Geralt, she thinks, is displeased by the company, and while she’s glad to see other living people, she can’t deny that it makes her anxious as well. She can’t stop thinking of Anton sneering that she was only as good as the gold her death could buy him.

Anton, impaled on a spike of wood alongside the rest of his crew with his mouth gaping open and his sightless eyes watching the sky.

Strangers are dangerous. Fortunately, the cloak of wary standoffishness that Geralt exudes seems to have expanded to include her as well. Perhaps people take them for father and daughter; there’s not much similarity in their looks, but they’re both pale-haired and dirty and most folk, she’s learned, don’t look much past their own noses.

Most folk on the road these days are wary enough of strangers themselves, which is why she’s so unnerved by the man who’s paused at the riverbank beside her while she’s filling up the water skins. He keeps casting glances her way that aren’t nearly as subtle as he clearly thinks they are, and it makes her feel twitchy and exposed. She’s half-tempted to leave with no water at all, for all that there’s a fire going, and soap that Geralt acquired in a mutually taciturn exchange with the wizened old woman and her granddaughters camping alongside them.

It’s not the way a man looks at a girl he wants to put his hands on. She knows that look, better than she’d like. This look is worse, though. This one is _curious._

He’s wearing a patchy, graying beard and has the gaunt and wary look common to most of the refugees that Ciri has met on the road, though his clothes were probably very fine when he put them on. A scuffed wooden instrument case is slung over his shoulder, along with a thin leather pack.

He glances over at her for a third time, and when Ciri meets his eyes he clears his throat and says, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to—have we met before? I could swear I know your face.”

Ciri stands abruptly. Her heart thumps sharply in her chest, her fingertips tingling and she swallows hard, trying to get a grip on herself. She can’t draw lightning down. Not here, not in the middle of a camp, but if he’s recognized her— “I don’t think so. Sorry.”

“No, I do, I definitely do.” His eyes narrow. “Or perhaps it’s just that you’re the spitting image of Pav—”

A large hand settles on Ciri’s shoulder, and she jumps slightly before realizing who it must be. His approach was completely silent. “Finish that sentence and I’ll gut you like a fish.”

It says something about how very strange her life has become recently that the rough hand and harsh, threatening voice are as comforting in that moment as a nursery song. She wants to duck behind Geralt and put his bulk and his swords and his terrifying demeanor between her and the world, or at least this stranger asking dangerous questions. She doesn’t do it—whatever else might have happened, she’s still a princess, still the granddaughter of the Lioness of Cintra—but she does shift closer so that she’s bumped up against his side, the ridges of his armor digging into her shoulder.

The stranger doesn’t seem all that threatened. He peers up at Geralt for a long moment, and then, astonishingly, smiles. “I know we haven’t been on the best of terms recently, but that seems a touch excessive, don’t you think?”

Geralt stills. His hand twitches on her shoulder. 

“Jaskier.” His voice is hoarse and flat as always, but she’s learned to read him a little in the weeks they’ve spent on the road together and he sounds—unbalanced. Shocked, almost. “You’re going gray.”

The man—Jaskier—makes an indignant sound. “Lovely to see you as always, Geralt. You haven’t changed a bit.”

It has the sound of an insult rather than a compliment, but there’s an unmistakable thread of affection running through it all the same.

“That beard doesn’t suit you,” Geralt says, and lets go of Ciri to stride forward and haul the man into a rough hug that obviously startles him. His hands lift, flail, and then settle on Geralt’s shoulders, drawing into fists before he pulls back to smile at Ciri.

“And this must be—” he breaks off at Geralt’s glare. “Ah. Your… lovely traveling companion, whose name I certainly don’t know.”

“Don’t take up poker, Jaskier,” Geralt says, and glances back toward Ciri. “This is Fiona.”

“Fiona,” Jaskier says, like he’s trying out the taste of the name in his mouth, and then holds out a hand. “Lovely to meet you.”

*

The bard shares their fire that night.

It unnerves Ciri, though she tries to hide it. Geralt is not much different than usual. He goes about the camp chores quietly, and Ciri helps him; they’ve fallen into a rhythm over the past few weeks, and she knows how to build up a fire and brush down the horse, how to check her hooves for stones. She lingers at that task, rubbing her cheek on a warm brown flank while Roach wickers softly and lips at her hair, then noses at her pockets like she’s expecting to find treats there.

“Sorry,” Ciri says, stroking the velvety nose. “I haven’t got anything.”

Roach lets out a snort that sounds remarkably like Geralt’s and goes back to tearing up the thin grass. By the fire, Geralt is skinning a hare for the spit while the bard chatters at him. He has a lute in his lap and is plucking at the strings, though there’s no real song in the spill of notes. Geralt, she’s surprised to see, seems fairly unbothered by the prattle. Pleased, almost. It’s unnerving.

Dinner is in the dark, and Ciri slips into her bedroll soon after; Jaskier keeps trying to draw her into conversation. He has the deft, professional charm of a man who’s spent time in court, and after weeks spent in Geralt’s taciturn company, it unbalances her. He doesn’t seem offended when she offers him one-word answers, and Geralt seems to trust him, but still.

She doesn’t remember slipping into sleep, but she wakes, not from a nightmare, to the sound of quiet voices. When she opens her eyes sleepily, the two men are still sitting beside the campfire, silhouetted by the glow.

“...burned the keep,” Jaskier is saying. “I got out along with most of the family, but…”

“Nilfgaard won’t stop while there’s still land to be claimed.”

“Yes, well, I got that, Geralt. So you rather wasted your time trying to keep me out of it, didn’t you?”

“I…” Geralt trails off. “You knew. On the mountain, you knew what I meant to do. Why I sent you away.”

“I figured it out right away—or, well, alright, after a week or so of drowning my sorrows in strong drink and sympathetic barmaids, but who’s counting?” Geralt’s silence has taken on an affronted air, and Jaskier adds, smiling, “One does not become a successful bard without developing a keen eye for human nature. I happen to be a _very_ successful bard. And you, my dear Witcher, are not nearly as inscrutable as you like to think.”

“Hm.”

“I would have followed you, you know. All the way to Cintra, if you’d have had me.”

There’s another long silence, and then Geralt leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I know.”

“And that was the problem.”

“Jaskier.”

“No, I’m not leaving it alone this time.” The bard sets his lute carefully aside and moves until he’s seated so close to Geralt that she can’t even see a thin line of firelight between their bodies. 

She knows, on some level, that this is a private moment that she shouldn’t be watching. That she should make a noise, something to alert them that they’re not unobserved—but instead she watches as the bard curls a hand around the back of Geralt’s neck, draws their foreheads together. “Geralt, after all this time you must know…”

“I do,” Geralt says before he can finish. It’s quiet, but there’s an edge to it. He sounds resigned. Possibly a little angry, for no reason she can understand. “I know.”

“Alright then,” the bard murmurs. “Well. That’s good.”

Geralt’s hand comes up to cup the bard’s nape in turn. For a startled instant, Ciri thinks they might be about to kiss. She’s never seen two men kiss before, has never even considered the possibility of it, but it seems like that sort of moment. Quiet and charged and intimate all at once. 

Instead, Geralt drops his hand and sits back with a sigh. “Get some sleep. It’s a long trek in the morning.” He raises his voice slightly without turning. “That goes for you as well, Fiona.”

There’s a burst of startled-sounding laughter from the bard, and Ciri dives back into her bedroll, blushing furiously. 

The next morning, Jaskier packs up his camp alongside theirs and falls into step beside them on the road, humming a jaunty melody under his breath and looking well-pleased with the world. Geralt watches him with an expression similar to the way he looks at her when he thinks she’s not paying attention: the look of a man who has unexpectedly come across something precious that he thought lost for good.


	3. The Sorceress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Yennefer makes an appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know it's been a while; I'll try to not take three months on the last two chapters.

They’re two days outside of Sodden when they make camp beside a stream that’s clean and clear and, as she discovers when she actually tries to rinse away some of the road grit, icy cold. She gets the worst of it off anyway, but she’s still shivering when she makes it back to the camp. Geralt gives her a look and then catches her shoulder to push her gently down on a log near the small fire already kindled. She rubs her hands together, then holds them out gratefully toward the warmth as he _humphs_ softly and then drapes a blanket over her shoulders that smells only slightly of horse.

“Who would have known that the mighty White Wolf of Rivia would be such a mother hen?” Jaskier remarks brightly. He’s gutting a trout with a broad knife and an air of quick competence that surprises Ciri more than perhaps it should. For all his court finery and well-bred twaddle, he’s clearly no stranger to the chores of rough travel. “Fatherhood becomes you, Geralt.”

Geralt blows an annoyed-sounding breath through his nose and goes to deal with the horse. Ciri glares at Jaskier. “My father was Duny of Erlenwald.”

“True, but I wouldn’t go proclaiming that widely.” Jaskier gives her a rueful look a moment later, though. “My apologies, Princess.”

“I wouldn’t go proclaiming that widely, either,” says another voice from behind them, and Ciri whirls around in the same moment that Jaskier does to see a woman emerging from beneath the trees like the deep shadows there have taken on a life of their own. She’s dark-haired and pale-eyed and striking, swathed in black silk and fine shoes more appropriate for a royal banquet than a hike through the woods.

“Oh, fuck me,” Jaskier says before Ciri can do more than stumble to her feet, the horse blanket slipping down around her shoulders. He sounds mildly appalled but not terrified, so she doesn’t go for the knife that Geralt gave her, still strapped snugly at her hip. And anyway, Geralt himself is there a moment later, shouldering into the standoff with the air of a belligerent ox before coming to a sudden stop.

“Yennefer,” he says.

“Geralt,” the woman acknowledges archly. “Jaskier.”

Her eyes fall on Ciri next. They’re not blue like she thought at first; they’re violet, a lovely inhuman shade that a person could drown in if they stared too long. Ciri wrenches her gaze aside with an effort, and the woman’s mouth curls into a smile. She looks at Geralt. “Somehow you neglected to mention that your child of surprise was the Lion Cub of Cintra.”

“It wasn’t relevant,” Geralt says harshly. “Are you done?”

Jaskier looks between them with narrowed eyes, then says, slowly, “Were you looking for something, Yennefer? Or do you just enjoy squatting outside of campsites to harass unwary travelers?”

Yennefer’s smile widens. “Why not both?” She steps past them toward the fire with the air of a queen and not a single backward glance. “I thought you’d be coming this way. It seems as though we’ve got a _lot_ to discuss.”

Jaskier swears under his breath, then says, to Geralt, “This is entirely your doing.”

“I know.”

“Good,” Jaskier says. “I’m going to go get firewood. _Fiona_ ,” he adds, with delicate emphasis to her assumed name, “can come with me. Give the two of you a few minutes to sort yourselves out. You’re welcome.”

“Fine,” Geralt bites out. “But you’ll—”

“Yes, yes, I know, stay within earshot, if any harm comes to a single golden hair on her head you’ll skin me alive, et cetera.” He glances at the woman, who waits beside the campfire with no pretense whatsoever that she isn’t listening. “Anything you’d like to add?”

“You’re an ass, and I hope you get eaten by a bear,” she says, without much ire.

“I’ve missed these little chats of ours.”

She makes a huffing noise that’s almost a laugh. “Get out of here before I blast you to ashes, Jaskier.”

“Happy to. Come along, Fiona.”

* * *

Despite his apparent annoyance back at the camp, Jaskier seems entirely cheerful as they tromp off into the woods, leaving Geralt and Yennefer behind. He’s whistling a jaunty tune under his breath as he loads deadwood into his arms; one good thing about this time of year, at least, is that the dry wood isn’t yet buried by snow. Ciri trails behind more slowly. She’s glad to be away from the messy soup of tension back at the campfire, but she’s been walking all day and she’s tired and cold and more than a bit out of sorts. And the song the bard is whistling is quickly becoming annoyingly repetitive, which she tells him the third time he repeats a single snatch of melody.

“My genius is forever unappreciated,” he sighs, snapping a branch with the heel of his boot and loading it into his arms. They’re slightly uphill of the camp now, but the bare trees and sparse underbrush make it easy to see. It’s nothing like the vivid, fierce sense of life that clung to Brokilon even in the depths of winter; everything is brown and bare. Leaves crackle beneath her feet, sending up a sharp scent as she peers down at the camp. They’re too far away for her to hear what they’re saying, but she can see Geralt’s hunched shoulders, the woman’s tense posture. They look like they’re a moment away from coming to blows.

“Do you think they’re going to kill each other?”

“Hm?” Jaskier says, and then, without much concern, “Oh, probably not. Yennefer wants a strip out of his hide, but she’s really very fond of him. Erm. Deep down, that is.”

“Oh,” Ciri says, dubiously. None of the tense confrontation back at the camp earlier suggested _fondness_ to her. “She’s a sorceress, isn’t she?”

She couldn’t be anything else. Not with those eyes, not with the way she stepped out of the forest like she was materializing into thin air. Like the terrifying power that courses through Ciri is just a tool that she can bend to her will.

“One of the finest in the land,” Jaskier agrees brightly. “Or at least the craziest. They’re a fine pair, her and Geralt.”

He’s looking down the hill at the camp with an odd expression on his face. Ciri finds herself gripped by a sudden loneliness, a yearning for her home, her family, for people she could understand. For her grandmother. For Eist, for Mousesack and even Lazlo. For a world she knew.

Before she can say anything, or even think of anything to say, Jaskier shakes the expression off like water and tosses a smile her way. “At any rate, I think the bloodshed is nearly done. It should be safe to go back. Unless you need a moment?”

Ciri shakes her head, shifting her grip on the bundle of twigs in her arms. She swallows down her grief; it helps that there’s a flicker of curiosity there now too. She’s never met a sorceress before. Maybe, just maybe, this woman can teach her how to tame the power in her veins before it spreads out to burn the world to ashes.

When they make it back to the camp, there’s no sign of bloodshed or even hostility. Geralt and the sorceress are sitting together, close but not touching, speaking in low voices.

“Kiss and make up, then?” Jaskier asks, dumping his armload of wood beside the fire. “Lovely. Perhaps now we can eat without the dramatic tension spoiling everyone’s appetites.”

“If you’re the one cooking, I don’t need dramatic tension to spoil my appetite,” Yennefer says.

Jaskier smiles at her. There’s an edge to it, but it seems genuine enough. “Who said I was cooking for _you_?”

“I’ll cook,” Geralt says shortly, standing. “Presuming a bear hasn’t gotten to that fish while we were occupied.”

The fish that he and Jaskier caught earlier is intact, still wrapped in broad dry leaves. Geralt sets it on the coals, and Ciri helps him to fashion cakes out of the trail rations and set them on the stone to bake. When she sits down, she sees that the sorceress is watching her with a thoughtful look in her inhuman eyes.

Power prickles through Ciri’s palms as if called unwilling to the surface. She clenches her hands shut and looks away.


End file.
